Midwives convene for education training

The Caribbean Midwifery Association and Belize’s Ministry of Health conducted two days of training starting on Thursday for persons practicing the important process of midwifery – assisting expectant mothers through the process of pregnancy and even after delivery into post-natal care. Of Belize’s seven hundred registered nurses, about half are midwives, and one cannot be the latter without the former. But not all of them practice, and there is a shortage. According to Nurse Augustina Elijio, the deputy director of health services for nursing and midwifery, this training will introduce new teaching practices that it is hoped will be passed down through the formal education process at the University of Belize and elsewhere.

Augustina Elijio, Deputy Director of Health Services (Nursing)

Augustina Elijio

“We have two facilitators, one from Trinidad and Tobago and one from Bahamas, who have been going to the different Caribbean member states to somewhat standardize this aspect of community-based training for midwifery. If you would look at the way training is normally held, it’s usually a didactic, theoretical approach. The International Council of Midwives is saying that because the profession of nursing, the profession of midwifery, is more a psycho-motor, hand-skill type of profession, we need to take a different approach in mentoring, in precepting, in teaching our young students. People learn at different pace, people have different styles in teaching and learning; so we need to be quite knowledgeable of those approaches, so we could deliver such to the learner.”